Putting Alexa on a Raspberry Pi

Every geek worth his nerdiness has wanted to be able to converse with their computer since we saw Star Trek's Data talk to the Enterprise's computer back in the 1960s. For most of the time since then, having a real conversation with a computer has seemed something that was really, really far away. Recently, it's got a lot closer ...

Just over a year ago I reviewed Amazon’s Echo which I judged to be amazing and I still think it's amazing although even though the technology is still in its early days. The problem is that the Echo isn't really conversational as it's limited to a basic request-response model (though its occasional weird weird non-sequiturs are hysterical and TV ads from Amazon of course get hilarious responses). That said, the Echo, which uses the Alexa Voice Service, remains a compelling, useful product and since I wrote about it, Alexa’s abilities have grown rapidly. Alexa now understands a much greater range of ways to make a request, can deliver information on a wider range of topics, and has an API that has matured and expanded impressively. Here's how the Echo works: On the backend, there’s the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) which is:

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